Scripture: 1 Samuel 25:1-44
Sermon Series: 1 Samuel: God of Reversals – Sermon 26
In the city of Hebron on Israel’s West Bank, there’s a wall with a poem written commemorating the death of a child. This child was sitting in her stroller, out with her mother on a lovely March day. But the little girl was murdered in the kind of tit-for-tat fighting that’s claimed the lives of so many children on the streets of so many cities around the world. Near where this child was killed is a poem on the wall that reads, “We will take revenge, we will scream for revenge in body and spirit and await the coming of the Messiah.” How would you feel if your child was murdered or caught in the crossfire of some gang war? Would you find yourself screaming for revenge?
One fact that’s come out of studies of mass shootings is that many are driven by revenge. Some happened at schools where the perpetrator had been bullied. Others at workplaces where an employee feels they were mistreated.
Have you ever thought about how many popular movies are about revenge? John Wick Chapter 4 (picture) is currently in theaters. It’s about a hitman who reformed his life after getting married but when his wife dies from a terminal illness, Wick is plunged deep into depression. His wife’s last gift to him was a puppy named Daisy (picture). Daisy is the only thing that gets him out of bed. But a Russian mob member breaks into his home, beats him bloody, steals his car, and kills Daisy. An enraged Wick wants payback.
Movies like Braveheart, Gladiator and even Princess Bride have revenge as a key factor. Inigo Montoya is driven by revenge to kill the man who murdered his father (picture).
This morning we’re working through 1 Samuel 25. David struggles with a desire for Payback. The man after God’s own heart becomes vengeful after he’s insulted and his kindness toward a rich fool, Nabal, is spurned. Though David loved God, he was still a sinful human being…just like us.
Our sinful hearts struggle with bitterness and longing for revenge. Maybe your spouse committed adultery or just walked out. Do you have a boss who lives to make you miserable? It might be a parent who’s deeply wounded you or bullies at school who pick on your child. Has a close friend betrayed you? The list is endless. Even pastors suffer with betrayal and deep woundedness.
Hurt, betrayal, woundedness are part of our fallen world. Like David, we struggle to not long for some Payback. Maybe that’s you? How wise are these words of Croatian Theologian, Miroslav Volf (picture): “To triumph fully, evil needs two victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned. After the first victory, evil would die if the second victory did not infuse it with new life.”
As Christians, we’re to be the forgiving people because we who know Jesus have been forgiven so much. Yet, if there’s any virus that poisons believers’ hearts and churches, it’s bitterness and a longing for Payback. We’re David.
This chapter revolves around three characters: David, Nabal and Abigail. As we work through this, in the quietness of your heart, ask some key questions: Where do I fit in this story? Who am I most like? What can I learn from their story that will help me with mine? What do the experiences of these people tell me about God’s grand story to save us and renew us in Jesus Christ? If you’re taking notes…
1.Loss makes us emotionally vulnerable. The text simply says, “Now Samuel died. And all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him in his house at Ramah. Then David rose and went down to the wilderness of Paran” (vs. 1). “And Samuel died.” In English, his obituary is just 20 words. Yet, Samuel had been a giant in David’s life. He’d anointed him as king. When David ran for his life from Saul, it was Samuel that he ran to. Have you ever lost someone who was a giant in your life?
Hope of reconciliation with Saul died with the great prophet. The loss of Samuel’s prayers and influence hit David hard. Samuel was one of Israel’s greatest leaders since Joshua and one of David’s greatest supporters.
David heads off to the one of the most desolate areas in Israel, Paran (map). The text doesn’t tell us that anyone went with David. Perhaps he went there alone to grieve the loss of his friend and mentor.
Loss makes us vulnerable. It’s probably happened to you. You’ve gone through something and felt like the rug was pulled out from under you. Maybe it was the loss of a job or close friend or parent. You feel like you’ve lost your anchor. When we’re hurting, we’re weak and emotionally on edge. We often act out of character. That seems to explain why David reacts so angrily to this fool. It’s out of character for David. In chapter 24 David spares Saul’s life and regrets even cutting off part of Saul’s robe. But here he goes into warp drive over being insulted by a man who had a reputation
of being foolish.
God replaces His workmen, not His work. Recently, Charles Stanley (picture) met Jesus face to face. God in His
sovereign plan never takes people a day too soon and never a day too late. But there can be a dependence on great Christian leaders. Their loss can be a cause for great distress. Well-meaning Christians will say, “We were so dependent upon him or her. What will we do?” Samuel was important, but not irreplaceable.
J. C. Ryle (picture), commenting on this when in his day people were saying similar things when great ministers of the church began to pass away: “Fear not for the church of Christ when ministers die, and saints are taken away. Christ can ever maintain His own cause. He will raise up better servants and brighter stars. The stars are all in His right hand. Leave off all anxious thought about the future…Christ will ever provide for His own church. Christ will take care that ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ All is going well, though our eyes may not see it. The kingdoms of this world shall yet become the kingdoms of our God, and of His Christ.”
And “Samuel died.” It’s in this context that we’re introduced to other members of the cast.
2. Kindness is frequently unreciprocated, vss. 2-8. Hopefully, this has never happened to you but it probably has. Here’s the story.
A couple own a printing company. As was their practice with family and friends, they didn’t charge a cousin for all of the printing for her upcoming wedding; signage, banners, guest books, life size cutouts, etc…all free. But then they discovered their cousin had uninvited them to the wedding so they billed the bride $2,000. When the engaged couple were trimming their guest list, they cut out this couple who’d done so much for them. In the Reddit post this printer wrote that he and his wife do free printing services “all the time for friends’ weddings and events, and we never charge. We’re happy to help out and it’s usually a lot of fun working together to make some cool stuff.”
But when his wife said to the cousin that they’d somehow missed the invitation, the cousin said that they “downsized the wedding,” deciding to make it “a close friends and family thing.” The bride “didn’t have space” for them in their small venue.
Feeling both hurt and insulted, especially after having spent some $2,000 on just the materials for printing, they billed the cousin for their costs. While it didn’t bother the engaged couple to uninvite them, it really offended them to be billed for the material costs for the printing. The uninvited couple received angry, even threatening calls from the cousin and fiancé, random members of the family and even some of the groomsmen. Clare Boothe Luce (picture) nailed it, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
David’s day was a Mad Max world. Bandits or enemy raiders would attack, stealing what they wanted. David’s men, without being asked, camped near Nabal’s herds to protect them. David never asked if they should. It was the right thing to do. David and his men were good neighbors, living out Paul’s admonition in Galatians 6:10: “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”
David was a good shepherd, not only of his own flock but the flocks of others. He protected Israel like a king, even though he wasn’t yet the king.
Culturally, there was usually some type of reciprocation. Even today, when someone is a friend and we keep inviting them and paying for lunch, we expect it will be reciprocated at some level. Or if you buy a couple a wedding gift, you anticipate a thank you note.
It can be discouraging when a relationship is one-sided. For the believer, the key to freedom is give and share “as unto the Lord” (Ephesians 6:7). It frees us if we do things for an audience of One. If there’s never reciprocation, it doesn’t matter because we didn’t do it for them. It was done for the Lord.
The text introduces us to a literal Beauty and the Beast, Nabal and Abigail. Nabal is like a Saul clone. Notice the way we’re introduced to him. The passage doesn’t lead with his name; it leads with what he owns. Because what Nabal has is what he’s really all about; he was all about his possessions.
He’s very wealthy. He’s also surly and mean. One of his servants describes him in verse 17 as “such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him.”
Even Abigail says her husband is a “worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and folly is with him” (25:25). His name means fool and Nabal acts like one. In Scripture a fool isn’t someone stupid. Nabal was probably very intelligent to make and maintain his wealth. He’s a fool because he rejected the truth of God’s Word and God’s way.
In the Bible there are only two kinds of people: the wise and the fool. The wise are those who respond to God’s truth in obedience. They revere God and let His truth guide and control their lives. The fool acts stubbornly in disobedience to God’s truth. You can’t tell or teach them anything.
Nabal violated the admonition of 1 Timothy 6:17-18: “Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous” (The Message).
Then there’s the Beauty, Abigail. She’s everything that Nabal is not. The narrative indicates that she’s intelligent, beautiful, and has godly wisdom. She’s lovely inside and out. Evidently, she was raised in a secure home. Her name means “the joy of my father.”
But an obvious question is: “How does a rose like Abigail get stuck with a thorn like Nabal?” It’s remarkable how many Abigails end up married to Nabals. Chances are Abigail found herself in this relationship through no fault of her own. It was customary in that day for a woman to have her husband chosen by her father. Arranged marriages often turned out to be disasters, but so do many marriages entered into because the two people are supposedly “in love.” Many couples give less thought to character traits of their life’s partner than they do to the model of car they buy. Even Christians can be more focused on appearance rather than heart…and live to regret it.
The bottom line is that when you give something to a fool, it probably won’t be appreciated and may even be disdained. That was Nabal.
3. It’s normal to react to mistreatment, vss. 9-13. Are you amazed how quickly your anger can go from 0 to hyperspace? When David learns how Nabal has treated him, he snaps. He’s being dissed. James 1:19 warns, “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” Isn’t that all of us? Kind one moment and madder than a junkyard dog the next.
Verse 9. “When David’s young men came, they said all this to Nabal in the name of David, and then they waited.” Can’t you just see them just standing there waiting and waiting? People in power will use making others wait as a power statement.
David sent his messengers graciously and humbly, referring to himself as “your son David.” Back then when the sheep were sheared, it was a time of celebration. It was common for the owner to set aside a portion of the profit and give it to those who helped protect his flocks. It’s kind of like tipping a server in a restaurant. There was no written law saying you had to do it. It was just a way to show gratitude for a job well done. David and his men have done an excellent job and any man with 3000 sheep could spare a few.
Nabal doesn’t just blow David off, he verbally slaps him. The NIV says he hurled insults at them. Nabal acts like he doesn’t even know who David is, but he knows David is “the son of Jesse.” Notice how many times he says, “my” – “my bread, my water, my meat, my shearers.” He uses first person references in his speech eight times. Like many rich folk Nabal had a strong sense of his own possessions. He was arrogant, rude and stingy.
When the messengers return with their report, David is enraged. “Every man strap on his sword!” And every man of them strapped on his sword. David also strapped on his sword” (25:13). Three times the word “sword” is mentioned. David doesn’t plan to just take out Nabal, he’s going to kill every male working for Nabal. Verse 22: “God do so to the enemies of David and more also, if by morning I leave so much as one male of all who belong to him.” It’s like trying to kill a fly with a shotgun. You don’t need 400 men to squash one tightwad. David is shamed. His pride is on the line. As Chuck Swindoll (picture) puts it, “Nabal’s tent would be soaked with his ‘blue blood’…and not only his, his sons as well. A massacre was in the making.”
Vengeance makes us irrational. Vengeance is not justice. Most of us know what it’s like to be David, to feel the heat in our face and long for revenge. David here is acting like Saul. Believers are never to act in vengeance. We’re to leave it with God. There are different kinds of vengeance.
What we have here is relational vengeance. My sister went through a terrible divorce. Rather than dividing the assets, her ex hid them. He put property and other assets in the name of one of their sons so he wouldn’t have to declare it. It was wrong and angered her. When something like that happens, you want to settle the score. Your fuming, yelling or even cussing.
Some struggle with passive/aggressive vengeance. It’s seen in ghosting or the silent treatment. For some of us the silent treatment is almost like our spiritual gift. Pouting is our superpower.
Rerouted vengeance is when you swallow the rage. You may anesthetize it with alcohol or drugs, or even become a workaholic. But it will come out and others will face your rage. A spouse or child will experience the anger that’s really toward a boss or someone else we feel wronged us but we don’t want to or don’t believe that we can express it safely to the guilty party.
One of the more common ones among Christians is spiritual vengeance. They’re like David is with Nabal but they aim it toward God. They’re bitter and feel God owes them and hasn’t come through for them. Maybe they have rebellious kids or a bad marriage or some serious disease. They’re like, “God are you kidding me? How could You let this happen to me?” They stop praying, reading their Bible or going to church. They begin what’s called “deconstructing.” They’re angry and want to take it out on God.
4. God graciously sends messengers to keep us from sinning, vss. 14-31. Beverly Sklover was only 4 feet 10 inches tall, but she was described as a “towering presence on the telephone.” She advertised herself as “The Nudge Lady,” after the Yiddish word that sounds like “noodge.” It stands for a chronic and persistent nag. For $50 the first hour and $40 for each additional one, she’d make call after call after call to right a wrong or get someone a refund. How does she do it?
The lawyer and former New York City planner says five years in business taught her yelling gets you nowhere. She says, “I always speak in the softest voice possible. Then people have to listen.”
The Nudge Lady reminds me of Abigail. Her family and servants are headed for disaster. Faced with a crisis, Abigail takes the initiative. With grace and courage she appealed to David’s sense of mercy. With gentleness and humility she calmed him down and her household was saved.
I’ve had the privilege of knowing a few Abigails. We have some here at Grace. My wife can be an Abigail. Jane is the calm, even tempered one…opposites attract.
Please don’t overlook the little guy in this story. Verse 14 tells us that an anonymous servant clues Abigail in. So much of the Bible is filled with these characters, male and female: It should be a great encouragement to us. Like this nameless servant, the vast majority of us will not even be a footnote in history. If we think that Samuel’s obituary was short, wait till it’s ours. Yet this servant’s intervention was of crucial importance. He gives Abigail the real scoop and urges her to intervene.
Abigail is a noblewoman but is willing to listen to a servant. The servant feels free to speak the truth because she’s a woman who listens. You learn a lot about someone’s character from the way they treat a waitress or a janitor.
When Abigail is informed of David’s intention of punishing Nabal’s household for the devilish behavior of her husband, she loses no time putting together a care package. When she meets David, she falls at his feet, and with great discernment and wisdom she influences him through a ministry of encouragement, even of exhortation. She exercises leadership while David is scarcely aware he’s being led. Notice how she does it.
First, she turns David’s attention to the Lord. Women often have a greater sensitivity to the Lord’s leading in their lives than do men. All David can focus on is that he’s been offended and wants to avenge his honor against this fool. Abigail gets him to think about the Lord. Here are some of her words: “The Lord has kept you from bloodshed; the Lord will establish your dynasty; the Lord will protect you; the Lord will defeat your enemies; the Lord has always been faithful; the Lord will establish you as king.”
One of God’s gifts to the church are those believers that can speak hard truths in a gracious way. Ever known anyone like that? They can tell you that you’re a failure, that your behavior is inexcusable, and you accept it. If anyone else said it to you, you’d be livid. What a gift! Abigail had that gift.
Her goal is to communicate to David that he’s about to make a vile mistake. There are two ways for her to go about it. One option is to say, “David, you’re an idiot. You’re as big a fool as Nabal. He hurt your feelings so you’re going to kill several dozen!” Or she could do as she did, gently warning him that he’s about to throw away in a moment all that he’s worked for, reminding him at the same time that God is quite able to avenge his honor.
How we say what we say is as important as what we say. David sees a gentle and quiet spirit and he hears soft and humble persuasion. Twelve times in her brief speech she calls him “lord” or “master.” Another seven times she refers to herself as his “servant.” She wants something important and is wise enough to know that confronting an angry man with ultimatums won’t achieve her goal.
Men, there’s a vital lesson for us here. We have a responsibility to listen to our Christian sisters and not let our egos stand in the way of being taught by godly women of discernment. The benefits men can reap when they listen to such women are enormous.
Abigail’s plea is the longest speech by a woman in the Old Testament. It’s filled with wisdom. She achieves three goals: she successfully intercedes for her fool of a husband by taking the blame; she acknowledges David as Israel’s future king; she prevents David from murdering her husband’s clan.
Her reasoning is theological, rational and convincing. She becomes David’s savior – a savior in a skirt. Her intervention keeps David from behaving like Saul. She keeps him from turning Carmel into another Nob. Israel’s rejected king might butcher innocent people but not God’s anointed, chosen king. Patience and restraint are to be the path of God’s servants. David must live by faith – he must entrust the evil of Nabal into God’s just hands.
David’s backdown is breathtaking—from bloodletting rage to calm gratitude to God for Abigail’s intervention. He listens and though the word repent isn’t used, he repents and reverses his course of action. He gratefully acknowledged the goodness and wisdom of everything she had said and recognized the courage of her action.
God still has His messengers. You and I will miss the message and act foolishly if we’re not paying attention. God uses His Word, His church and godly friends. Many Christians make blunders like David was about to make because those three are not part of their lives. May you and I be like David – teachable and flexible and listening to God’s messengers.
5. Truth and time walk hand in hand, vss. 36-44. Some years ago I was at a meeting with then president of Moody Bible Institute, Joe Stowell (picture) along with about several other pastors, We were getting advice from him on how to handle some critical junctures in our ministries that were bringing unwarranted criticism. Dr. Stowell had faced the same
thing in his own ministry of brutal attacks. At that meeting he made this statement: “Truth and time walk hand in hand” and they do. My friend, God always take care of matters and He doesn’t need our help.
Abigail returns home. Nabal is having a drunken party like a king. The next morning when he’s sober, Abigail tells him how close he came to being executed along with every male in his house. His heart became like a rock. Most scholars think that he had something like a stroke and died. The key statement is “the Lord struck Nabal, and he died” (vs. 38). The stroke didn’t kill Nabal and neither did David. God took care of it. Nabal received justice but not from David’s hand. Sadly, Nabal died as he had lived, a fool.
The last scene in this account is a bit ironic. When David heard of Nabal’s death, he sent a marriage proposal to Abigail to become his wife and she accepted. Nabal not only lost his life, he also lost his wife to the man that he refused to help, whom he denied even knowing. While kings were not to multiply wives as David does, if David had not married Abigail, as a widow in that culture, it would have left her in dire poverty.
David by leaving matters in God’s hands saw the fulfillment of Romans 12:19, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’.”
Conclusion: What would you do if your child was murdered? How would you feel about the family, the wife and parents of the killer? In October 2006 Charles Roberts (picture) shot 10 young schoolgirls in a one-room Amish school and then took his own life. But in the hours and days following the shooting a different, unexpected story developed. In the midst of their grief over their shocking loss, the Amish community didn’t cast blame or point fingers, they didn’t hold a press conference with attorneys at their sides. Instead, they reached out with grace and compassion to the killer’s family.
The very afternoon of the shooting an Amish grandfather of one of the girls who was murdered expressed forgiveness toward the killer, Charles Roberts. That same day Amish neighbors visited Roberts’ wife and family to comfort them in their sorrow and pain. Later that week the Roberts family was invited to the funeral of one of the Amish girls who’d been killed. And Amish mourners outnumbered the non-Amish at the killer’s funeral. In a world at war and in a society that points fingers and blames others, this response is unheard of. Many asked, “How could they forgive such a terrible, unprovoked act of violence against innocent lives?”
We know the answer. It’s because of Jesus. 1000 years later David’s greater Son would pray from the cross, “Father, forgive them…” He commands us to do the same.
If you’re a Christian, if you know Jesus, you have to be a forgiver. You can’t seek vengeance. You can’t live in bitterness.
It’s why the cross of Christ still towers over the wrecks of time. It’s at the cross where we see evil at its hateful worst. It’s there we see an accounting for sin and judgment exacted. It’s there we see the horror of evil overcome by the power of God’s redeeming love. We hear the good news that we can be forgiven. The heart we need to turn from the revenge that’s killing our world to the amazing grace that overcomes evil can be found by you and me.
My friend, do you know Jesus as your Savior? Have you been forgiven? Are you a forgiver? Maybe there’s a Nabal in your life? We all have them? Are you longing for payback? Is there someone you need to forgive?
This is so important so let me end with some vital applications.
1.We must leave revenge, a desire for payback, in God’s hands. When people hurt us, it’s tempting to want revenge. It can be physical revenge, legal revenge, social snubbing, gossip, or even slander on Social Media. As those who have been forgiven, we must leave revenge in God’s hands. He will carry out justice in His time. Revenge is not God’s way. Romans 12:17, 19: “Repay no one evil for evil…Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” Only God has the authority for vengeance. He’s the God of justice and will take care of it. We must surrender all of our injustices to Him. Our responsibility is to show forgiveness, love, and mercy, just as God has shown forgiveness, love, and mercy to us. This includes our worst enemies and those who have hurt us the most.
2. We must be attentive that during times of loss or hurt, we’re the most vulnerable to spiritual failure. As David was vulnerable after the loss of Samuel, so are we when we experience loss.
3. God does not want Lone Ranger Christians. We need fellow believers. We need the church. God uses other Christians to help open our eyes to our sin and wisely counsel us away from revenge and bitterness.
4. We must be teachable. Who are you like? Am I like Nabal, who was too foolish and proud to listen to gentle correction? Or am I like David who valued gentle correction even from someone of lower rank than him?
David’s greater Son resisted the use of violence to accomplish God’s plan. When Jesus was arrested in the garden He told Peter to put away his sword. The Lord Jesus, the Son of David, is the legitimate Anointed one. Like His ancient ancestor, David, He refused to give in to vengeance and human power to accomplish the will of God. 1 Peter 2:23,
“When He was reviled He did not revile in return…” He calls us to do the same. We are to forgive as we have been forgiven!